Proverbs 5

General context

The speaker tells "My son" to attend to his wisdom so that he may keep discretion and knowledge. He then describes the strange woman: her lips drop as a honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil, but her end is bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword; her feet go down to death and her ways are moveable so that they cannot be known. Turning to "ye children", he tells them to remove their way far from her and not come near the door of her house, lest they give their honour to others and their years to the cruel, lest strangers be filled with their wealth, and lest they mourn at the last when flesh and body are consumed. He puts words of regret in the mouth of such a man: "How have I hated instruction", and "I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly." The speaker then turns to the image of water: drink from thine own cistern and well, let thy fountains be thine own and not strangers'. He tells the son to rejoice with the wife of his youth, to let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe and to be ravished always with her love, and asks why he would instead be ravished with a strange woman. The chapter ends by saying the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, that the wicked will be held with the cords of his own sins, and that he will die without instruction.

Cited passages: Proverbs 5:1, Proverbs 5:2, Proverbs 5:3, Proverbs 5:4, Proverbs 5:5, Proverbs 5:6, Proverbs 5:7, Proverbs 5:8, Proverbs 5:9, Proverbs 5:10, Proverbs 5:11, Proverbs 5:12, Proverbs 5:14, Proverbs 5:15, Proverbs 5:17, Proverbs 5:18, Proverbs 5:19, Proverbs 5:20, Proverbs 5:21, Proverbs 5:22, Proverbs 5:23

Proverbs 5 (KJV)

This page shows the King James Version. In the app, reading opens in the Berean Standard Bible unless you have chosen another translation. The reader includes five translations: the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), the King James Version (KJV), the World English Bible (WEB), the Bible in Basic English (BBE), and the American Standard Version (ASV). Search covers three of them: Berean Standard, King James, and World English. Basic English and American Standard readers search the King James words.

Historical context

The address moves from singular "My son" (verses 1 and 20) to plural "O ye children" (verse 7) and back, and the chapter does not explain the shift. The strange woman is again unnamed and described by effect rather than identity; the text does not say whether "strange" means foreign, married to another, or simply outside the son's own household, and the reader should not settle that from this chapter alone. The losses threatened in verses 9 to 11 are stated in general terms, honour to others, years to the cruel, wealth to strangers, flesh and body consumed, without naming a law, a penalty or a disease. The regretful speech in verses 12 to 14 is a hypothetical confession introduced by "And say"; it is not the report of a particular man. The phrase "the wife of thy youth" assumes the son is or will be married, which is the first time the discourses speak of the son's own wife. The cistern, well and fountain in verses 15 to 18 are figures the speaker uses, and the chapter itself pairs them with the wife in verse 18, so the connection is made by the text and not by inference. The closing verses shift from the son to "the wicked" in the third person, and assert that the Lord sees all a man's ways.

Cited passages: Proverbs 5:1, Proverbs 5:7, Proverbs 5:3, Proverbs 5:9, Proverbs 5:12, Proverbs 5:18, Proverbs 5:21, Proverbs 5:22

Literary context

The chapter is built on a contrast of taste and touch: the strange woman's lips are honeycomb and oil, but her end is wormwood and a sword. The sequence of "Lest" clauses (verses 9 and 10, continued by "And thou mourn at the last" in verse 11) sets out the cost step by step, and it ends with the man's own imagined voice of regret, so that the warning is delivered from inside the disaster rather than from outside it. The middle section replaces the strange woman with the son's own wife, and the language changes from bitterness to water and animals: cistern, well, fountains, rivers, hind, roe. The word "ravished" is used twice in adjacent verses, once for the wife and once for the strange woman, so that the same verb carries the chapter's central question, "why wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman". The words "strange" and "stranger" recur at verses 3, 10, 17 and 20, binding the two halves together. The close moves from persuasion to statement: the Lord sees, sin binds like cords, and folly leads astray. The image of the woman's feet going down to death in verse 5 anticipates the last verse of chapter 7, where her house is the way to hell.

Cited passages: Proverbs 5:3, Proverbs 5:4, Proverbs 5:9, Proverbs 5:11, Proverbs 5:13, Proverbs 5:16, Proverbs 5:19, Proverbs 5:20, Proverbs 5:10, Proverbs 5:5, Proverbs 5:22

Key moments

1. Honeycomb and wormwood (Proverbs 5:3). The strange woman's lips are compared to honeycomb and oil, her end to wormwood and a sword.
2. Come not near her door (Proverbs 5:8). The children are told to keep far from the strange woman's house.
3. Imagined regret (Proverbs 5:12). The speaker voices the words a ruined man would say about having hated instruction.
4. Thine own cistern (Proverbs 5:15). The son is told to drink from his own cistern and well.
5. The wife of thy youth (Proverbs 5:18). The son is told to rejoice with the wife of his youth and be ravished with her love.
6. Why a strange woman? (Proverbs 5:20). The speaker asks why the son would be ravished with a strange woman instead.
7. Held by cords of sin (Proverbs 5:22). The wicked is said to be taken by his own iniquities and held by the cords of his sins.

For reflection

The speaker imagines the son at the end of his life saying, "How have I hated instruction." Why does the chapter make the son hear his own future regret before it tells him what to do instead?